Once Saved, Always Saved and Ordained Unto Good Works!

One of the biggest heresies today is to teach that a person may say the sinner's prayer in a repeat after me formula, get saved, teach eternal security, live a wanton life, kill a whole school, kill himself and get unto Heaven.  While I do believe in eternal security but I am against the erroneous view of it that teaches it means that a Christian can be saved, no change and still go to Heaven.  The Bible warns in Matthew 7:17-20 that a good tree bears good fruit and a bad tree bears bad fruit, by fruits the children of God are made manifest against the children of the Devil.  What is making me sick is that how today, Antinomians are gaining as much ground as Armininians in a battle where whoever wins, it's always a terrible outcome.  If Arminians teach us to rely on ourselves to get saved, Antinomians teach we can be saved and not show signs of being truly saved.  For one, Pastor Paul Washer had EVERY RIGHT to display righteous anger against Churches that gives false assurance.  False assurance is always dangerous whether Antinomian or Arminian.  

If you are truly saved, you are saved forever but there are signs that make a distinction between the saved and the unsaved.  In John 10, Antinomians may go ahead and misquote John 10:28 and the conditional security crowd may misquote John 10:27.  A better understanding of Scripture is this... Jesus is marking the saved from the unsaved.  One big trademark of being a Christian is power over sin (Titus 2:11-14), doing good works (Ephesians 2:10) and FOLLOWING CHRIST (John 10:27).  If you are of Christ, you will definitely hear him and FOLLOW Him.  Otherwise, to claim one is a Christian and yet not produce good works, that salvation is a SHAM!  2 Corinthians 9:9-11 talks about the difference of the old life and the new life... from unrighteous to righteous.  James 2 and Hebrews 11 are commentaries to each other... true faith begets GOOD WORKS.  And to be honest, I would dare doubt my salvation if I am not doing good works.  But my good works is proof that I am saved.  I take no credit for it.  I still sin but I sin less, and I don't sin all I want because God is trimming me daily to live righteously. 

The Calvinistic Baptist preacher Charles H. Spurgeon also wrote in the 1800s saying, "Another proof of the conquest of a soul for Christ will be found in a REAL CHANGE OF LIFE.  If a man does not live DIFFERENTLY from what he did before, both at home and abroad, his repentance needs to be repented of and his conversion is a FICTION.  Not only action and language but spirit and temper MUST BE CHANGED... Abiding under the POWER OF ANY KNOWN SIN is a mark of our being servants of sin for his "servants ye are to whom ye obey."  Idle are the boasts of a man who harbors with himself the LOVE OF ANY TRANSGRESSION.  He may feel what he likes and believe what he likes, he is still in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity while a single sin rules his heart and life.  True regeneration implants a HATRED OF ALL EVIL and where one sin is delighted in, the evidence is fatal to a sound hope... There must be harmony between THE LIFE AND THE PROFESSION.  A Christian professes to renounce sin; and if he does not do so, his very name is an imposture."

John Calvin also wrote, "We deny that good works have any share in justification, but we claim full authority for them in thei lives of the righteous.  It is obvious that gratuitous (grace-wrought) righteousness) is necessarily connected with regeneration.  Therefore if you duly understand how inseparable faith and works are, look to Christ as the Apostle teaches (1 Corinthians 1:30) has given to us for JUSTIFICATION and for SANCTIFICATION.  Wherever therefore, that righteousness of faith which we maintain to be gratuitous, is there too Christ is, and where Christ is, there too is the Spirit of holiness, Who regenerates the soul to the newness of life.  On the contrary, where zeal for integrity and holiness is not vigor, there neither is the Spirit of Christ nor Christ Himself, and wherever Christ is not, there is no righteousness, nay, there is no faith for faith cannot apprehend Christ for righteousness without the Spirit of sanctification."  

Lordship theologian and Calvinist Arthur W. Pink also wrote, "In considering the basis of the Christian’s assurance we must distinguish sharply between the ground of his acceptance before God, and his own knowledge that he is accepted by Him. Nothing but the righteousness of Christ-wrought out by Him in His virtuous life and vicarious death—can give any sinner a perfect legal standing before the thrice holy God. And nothing but the communication of a new nature, a supernatural work of grace within, can furnish proof that the righteousness of Christ has been placed to my account. Whom God legally saves, he experimentally saves; whom He justifies, them He also sanctifies. Where the righteousness of Christ is imputed to an individual, a principle of holiness is imparted to him; the former can only be ascertained by the latter. It is impossible to obtain a scriptural knowledge that the merits of Christ’s finished work are reckoned to my account, except by proving that the efficacy of the Holy Spirit’s work is evident in my soul."

Oswald T. Allis writes, "By the covenant of grace the Christian is NOT OFFERED faith as an easy substitute for works of righteousness.  It offers him an UNMERITED AND UNEARNED righteousness, the righteousness of Christ received by faith which challenges him and demands that HE WORK WORTHY OF HIS HIGH CALLING that he leanr to say as Paul did, 'the love of Christ constraineth us'.  The fact that he is not under the Law as a basis of works-salvation does not set before the Christian a lower standard than the Mosaic Law.. but a far higher one  When Jesus gave His disciples a new commandment, 'As I have loved you that ye also love one another.', He set them a standard of obedience that surpassed the commandment of the Law.  'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself...'>  Little wonder then that Paul answers the question, "Do we then make the void the law through faith?" with the empathic words, 'God forbid: yea we establish the Law."  And he wrote as well, "The whole teaching of the New Testament is that justification has as its objective sanctification, the redemption from all iniquity.  A faith that does not bring forth fruit unto righteousness is not a living faith."

And of course, from Calvinistic Baptist pastor, Dr. John F. Macarthur who wrote in page 109 of eternal security saying, "I am committed to the Biblical truth that salvation is forever.  Contemporary Christians have come to refer to this as the doctrine of eternal security.  Perhaps the Reformers' terminology is more appropriate; they spoke of the perseverance of the saints.  The point is not that God guarantees Heaven to everyone who professes faith in Christ, but rather that those whose faiht is genuine will never totally or finally fall away from Christ.  They will persevere in grace unt the very end.  Even if they fall into grevious sins or continue in sin for a time, they will NEVER abandon the faith completely.

A.W. Pink writing on this subject says, "God does not deal with believers as unaccountable automatons but as moral agents, just as their nature life is maintained through their use of means and their avoidance of that which is inimical to their well-being so it is with the maintenance and preservation of their spiritual lives.  God preserves His people in this world through their perseverance."  He also writes, "True believers will persevere.  Professing Christians who turn against the Lord only prove that they were NEVER truly saved.  As the Apostle John writes, "They went out from us but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would remained with us but they would have reamined with us but that they went out in order that it might be shown that they all are not of us (1 John 2:19).  No matter how convincing a person's testimony might seem, once the person becomes apostate, he or she demonstrates irrefutably that the testimony was hypocritical and the professed salvation was spurious.  Good will keep His own.  he is able to keep tem froms tumbling and to make them stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy (Jude 24)."

Romans 7 has Apostle Paul struggling with sin at a daily basis.  A more correct understanding of this passage will inevitably reveal this.  Christians may still sin at a daily basis, maybe some of them struggle with their old bad habits and I experience it, but remember there is God's grace.  Romans 7:19 says, "For the good that I would do not but for hte evil which I would not, that I do." which the Apostle Paul describes is a daily struggle.  Repentance, faith, submission and surrender do not end in salvation, they continue forward in sanctification until the day the Christian is called home.  If these traits do not persist, then it's certainly a red flag that somebody is a false convert!